Tag Archives: twitter

According to one horrendous drunk I met on the beer line who was “heah fah sum seminaaaaaaaaaaahs,” local scalpers had nosebleed seats going for upward of $200 a pop yesterday. And you wonder why there are so many pissed-off dudes calling for a foul on Gasol’s game-ending alteration; not tyte in this economy.

When it comes to “delivering penetrating analysis of live sporting events gleaned from the northernmost regions of Section 326 of the TD BankNorth Garden,” I = fail … or at least, I do if you’re looking for, y’know, actual sports information.

Seriously — almost nothing of value through my intermittent Tweeting last night. Checkforyourselfifyoudon’tbelieve. In my own retroactive defense, though, I do think that if I’d been able to receive @replies/messages from the folks I’d OK’d device updates for — still not real sure why the hell that didn’t work — I might have been in position for more legitimate ball talk. But even if I was, there probably wouldn’t have been much to it, because …

I have a much harder time assessing plays/seeing off-ball action live. I suspected this would be true, especially since I haven’t been to a live game in a while, but last night proved it.

My brother and I had a great view and we were able to diagnose some things (personal favorite: the way Ray Allen runs off screens like a slot receiver running an option route — sometimes continuing the curl to the cup, sometimes stopping dead and going right up with the J, sometimes starting to sell the curl before fading to the corner — and running each option at the same speed and without too discernible a pattern, so that when the shot’s in the air, you always find yourself saying, “How the hell did he get so open?”), but I’m positive that I missed a ton of stuff that more astute observers would have caught. That’s in part because …

I am a fantastic conversationalist who can make friends with all manner of semi-docile drunks in my vicinity. A fine skill, to be sure, but one that can cause you to miss shit.

For example, when all it takes are a few well-placed jokes and slight prods to get the dude next to me and his ladyfriend to divulge that there are five empty seats in the row in front of us because a whole crew of kids were talking during the National Anthem, then “got kicked out or whatever,” but really didn’t get kicked out they just went somewhere to try to find a spot to safely “blaze an L” in the Garden, and the reason that only one of the girls in the group came back three quarters later was because she had “ratted out all of her friends because ‘The Wire’ got them,” and it’s all a shame because “you’d have think she’da learned by now to stop snitching” … I mean, that’s more interesting to me than Doc’s substitution patterns. And speaking of Doc …

The man apparently crafted last night’s necktie entirely out of the Power Cosmic. Check it out:

It looks like something off a goddamn Joe Satriani album cover. Really enjoyed that. I also enjoyed …

The pounding, pulsating hatred Boston fans have for Sasha Vujacic. He got more boos than anyone not named Kobe Bryant last night, which blew me away.

Dude next to me repeatedly called Machine a “terrorist.” Guys behind me kept yelling, “WASH YAAAA HAAAAAAAIHH!” Every time he entered the game, my section seethed. Seems like a pretty disproportionate amount of hatred for the guy, but then again, he is a dirty, greasy terrorist, so I guess it’s all fair game. It really did seem like the entire case to be made for hating him more so than, say, Josh Powell is that he’s A) foreign and B) dirty-looking.

Um, Celtics fans? If those are your criteria, and you want to be spewing hatred on someone who is actually dismantling your team, how’s about spitting some venom on the dirty-bearded 7-foot Iberian who threw up 24 and 14 in your mugs and kept Ray from getting a clean look at the final shot. And speaking of beards …

Boston’s fanbase has a higher percentage of mad-thin chinstrap beards than any other NBA fanbase. For those unfamiliar with the style, a visual aid:

I would certainly be happy to be proven wrong, because that would mean there are exponentially more chinstraps being rocked out there than I would ever have anticipated, but Jesus Christ, dude. Twentysomething electrician’s apprentices from Framingham work hard on their facial grooming. That must be why they’re so confident, an attitude exemplified by …

The speed with which the fans heading toward the exit switched their style up from furious at the way OT ended to eager for a chance to right the ship come Finals-time.

As soon as we started filing out, you could hear the chatter: Bullshit call on KG, if he’s there for the last four minutes instead of Big Baby, it doesn’t go to OT; they had the inbounds play locked up, but Doc won’t let that happen again; we had ‘em the whole way, just some fluky stuff down the stretch, etc. (Of course, Lakers fans could say, “If we just hit our free throws, this game’s a 10-12 point breeze,” but whatever.) There was a lot of confidence in the loser’s parking lot after the game, which was cool to see. There were also, however, even more chinstraps, which were not.

I feel you, Diddy; in my case, the overt guilt stems from the fact that I have nothing today. Well, that’s technically not true — I have a shitload of work, a low-level champagne-and-Champagne-of-Beers hangover, a craving for chicken and dumplings (but not the chicken and dumplings soup that’s sitting at my desk) and a crippling fear of intimacy. Those are all things that I have today (and in the case of the first and last things, most days).

What I don’t have today, however, is hilarious blog content. There are reasons — my inability to figure out how to effectively navigate WordPress’ inability to handle certain kinds of video-embedding, for one, and spending at least half my weekend researching/traveling, for another — but they are immaterial. I’m going to be pounding away at my keyboard until the wee small hours tonight and probably tomorrow, but unfortunately, it can’t be for this thing I’ve come to love.

When the shit goes down

(NOTE: The music starts around :40, but the dramatic fervor and Latin flavor of the first 40 seconds are both inspired and inspiring, so you should watch.)

That was my mistake: I wasn’t ready. It almost escaped my notice when the gauntlet was thrown down earlier this week.

As has been the case since the start of the basketball season, I was a couple of days behind on The Basketball Jones — I used to listen to the audio podcast at work, but since they moved me into an office (that’s right — the kid’s IMPORTANT) without an easily accessible headphone jack (OK, maybe not) and I suck at remembering to update my iPod before work, I usually trail a bit. So it was a nice surprise when Brian informed me via Twitter that Skeets and Tas had answered my question on the Jones’ Inauguration Day episode.

Psyched to have worked my way onto the netwaves again, I waited until the coast was clear at the office, cranked up my shitty monitor speakers and set about watching the Jones. My e-mail was a follow-up on a previous show’s discussion of the league’s greatest post-shot celebrations, and I was pleased that they’d decided to voice my choice: Patrick Ewing’s uncontrollable sweating.

Wanna know the secret to Pat's healthy glow? NEVER BEING CONFIDENT HE'D MAKE A BIG SHOT.

No big deal, though — I just figured that in the rush of putting together a top-notch daily broadcast while also hustling to do Canadian stuff (you know, like figuring out Fahrenheit-to-Celsius conversions, proudly nodding and smiling at one another while listening to Rush-Bryan Adams-Snow mashups, never littering, etc.), the boys got my e-mail mixed up with someone else’s. Not wanting to steal someone’s moment of glory, I fired off an e-mail to make the powers that be aware of the mistake. Here’s the reply:

Did we type that out as ‘Devine’? It was meant to say ‘Divine’. Someone signed off their email that way…

Simple enough. Question answered, problem acknowledged, crisis averted. Now chuckle at the coincidence, take a hearty sip of coffee, cue up “Good Life” in your head and recline in your office, baby!

… your TBJ identity has been stolen.

/spits coffee on valuable reports while in mid-chuckle and briefly chokes, turning laughter to choke-induced tears and causing internal brain needle on “Good Life” record to scratch, which brings the strains of T-Pain to a halt

Oh, WORD?

Now you listen here, fellow-Basketball-Jones-fan-who-either-shares-my-name-or-a-variant-on-my-name-I’m-not-entirely-sure-which-since-the-e-mail-wasn’t-super-clear-but-nevertheless-is-totally-not-me: I almost kind of EARNED my Basketball Jones identity. And I’m not going to have some Johnny-Come-Lately start horning in on my nameturf.

I’ve paid my dues over the last two seasons. I’ve posted comments that no one found funny or insightful. I’ve e-mailed in a woefully off-base tip about a Simmons column that included an insult of the Raptors’ starting five that was actually an obvious joke, leading to an embarrassing retraction that’s best left forgotten by all. I’ve called the Jones Line to leave messages about Jason Maxiell’s jump shot that never had any prayer of getting on-air. And occasionally, once in a blue moon, I’ve contributed something that made JD take pity on me, and let my stuff get on the show.

I called the Jones to admit that I had a hard time deciding between sex with my girlfriend and watching the fourth quarter of Game 4 of Celtics/Lakers. What have you ever done?!

Not the most popular opinion out there given how summarily 2.0 and LeStateFarm are killing it right now, but when has that ever stopped the Diesel? Gotta say, though: the argument was more articulately stated and better punctuated when I saw it here.

Showering, boarding a train and seeing The Wrestler at the AMC in Boston Common. If you’re down there, shout out “DEVINE, YOUR BLOG IS NOT GOOD AND I AM NOT A FAN OF YOUR WRITING, IN FACT I’D VASTLY PREFER IT IF YOU’D STOP POSTING ENTIRELY SIR!” That way, I’ll know you’re talking to me and not someone else.